I think the expression “Do as I say, not as I do” might have started out as a humorous take on “Those who can’t do, teach”. I don’t know that of course, that’s a wild guess and me wanting to use both those phrases without doing any actual research, just like the media appears to be doing nowadays.
There’s a truth to the adage
There’s a certain amount of truth to the “can’t do so they teach” in the online world. There are a lot of people who talk about how to get thousands of visitors yet struggle to get visitors of their own. There’s lots of people telling you how to get rich online yet they can barely pay their own bills.
Sometimes I think people get “fake it until you make it” confused with “instant expert, no experience required”. One is about confidence, the other is about being a fake.
Of course there’s plenty of people who teach and do, but they don’t make for as popular stories as those “scam artists” do.
Are there ever exceptions to the rule?
But did you know that there’s exceptions to that? People who say “Do as I say and not as I do” and you should do as they say and not as they do? Really? Is that possible?
Yes it is. Look, just because the doctor is addicted to cigarettes doesn’t mean he’s lying or scamming you when he tells you that quitting smoking is going to help you live a longer, healthier life. Addictions are called “addictions” and not “habits” for a very good reason.
Okay, are there any other reasons?
There’s an oft-told story about why cars of good mechanics run so poorly. It’s because they spend all their time working on cars for a living, and quite frankly they don’t feel like working on their own cars in their spare time.
Do as they say, not as they do.
Now of course they ARE actually doing, they work on cars all day long, it’s just that they are not working on their own cars. So if you only saw their own cars, you might think they’re not good mechanics, but you’d be wrong.
What’s the point?
What does all this have to do with anything? It has to do with me, personally. I’m the online version of a mechanic.
I occasionally go to “gatherings” and usually, inevitably, someone asks me about my online activities. It’s very frustrating at times for me, when I see that look they get in their eyes when they find out I’m not doing such-and-such. They get almost “dismissive” of anything I have to say after that. I’m just another one of those “wannabes”.
Sometimes I’m a little vindicated when a little while later their eyes widen in shock as they listen to me speak about something with authority… because I AM an authority.
I HAVE made money with eBay. I HAVE made money blogging. I HAVE written eBooks. I HAVE made money from Adsense. I HAVE had mailing lists. I HAVE created courses. I HAVE made money through affiliate sales. I HAVE done a lot of things. And I still do some of them. Just often not for myself.
If there’s any of my old readers left hanging around from a few years ago, they can tell you, I used to blog a lot, now I hardly ever blog. Is it because I don’t know what I’m doing? HELLO, I made money doing it, so no, that’s not it.
What happened?
Why the change from “AM” to “HAVE”. There’s two reasons actually. They are very different, but they are connected.
One is that I got divorced. I did most of my big money making activities online when I was married. After the divorce, I stopped. Was it from depression? No, just the opposite. I didn’t know it at the time, and it took me a couple years after the divorce to figure it out. The computer was my escape mechanism from a bad marriage. It’s where I went to get away and it became profitable. I was motivated to escape and I did it in such a way that I started making money while doing it.
After the divorce I had no need to escape and I just didn’t have an overwhelming desire to keep at it. I lost my motivation I guess, but it was a terrible motivation to have in the first place, I would much rather have had a good marriage, and both of us are now better off and healthier because we divorced. I was still on the computer a lot afterwards but it was out of boredom. I just didn’t feel a drive or a need to keep doing things online. So I stopped.
But the money??
That’s a pretty normal response from people. I don’t know how accurate the statistic is of “95% of the people trying to make money online never do”, but in my experience it seems to be true.
Now that 5% ranges everywhere from people making a couple bucks a month to thousands a month, but considering that 95% aren’t even making spare change, a couple bucks is good, really good, okay, pretty impressive really. What that means is that all you need to do is to increase and/or improve what you’re doing to increase your monthly income, because congratulations, you’ve already passed the hardest part.
I was in the 5% Yes I was making money online, I was well on my way. That brings me to the other reason.
I’m not now, nor have I ever been, motivated by money. I’m just not. Of course you can’t pay the bills on that, but that’s a different issue. Since I had an actual job at the time, the money I was making from my online activities just didn’t matter to me.
I could be making money on eBay or on Amazon, or a variety of other ways for that matter, but I don’t. I don’t want to. It’s like blogging. I blogged for a couple years, and I made an important discovery: I don’t like blogging. I don’t mind writing, but the whole point of doing something online is so you can do something you enjoy. It was fun at first but then it just turned into another job. A job I didn’t want to do.
I don’t mind writing, but I don’t want to blog. I could write a daily newspaper column too, but I don’t want to. It’s not fun, it’s work.
Now let’s be clear about fun and work. I’m using the terms “fun” and “work” a little differently than you may be thinking. Making money online is not hard work like construction is, but it is work. You do have to actually DO work if you are going to make money online.
It may be a different kind of work than you are used to, but it is work. At no point should you ever hear me say (unless I’m being sarcastic) that you can make money online without working.
For some people, doing construction is not enjoyable at all, and that’s fine. For other people, they’d rather do construction than sit in front of their computer typing all day, and that’s fine too. Not all people are cut out for, have the patience, interest, or whatever, for all types of work. For example, I’d make a horrible detective. I’m just not an observant person. It’d be a terrible job for me.
So in this context, when I say “fun” I mean I enjoy it and when I say “work”, I mean I don’t enjoy it. I’m not using fun and work as in hobby and job.
A bonus reason
I suppose that considering the topic, “bonus” is probably not the best term. I’m lazy. Just because I know HOW to do something, doesn’t mean I’m going to bother DOING that something for myself. Take title tags for instance, it’s always a good practice to use them (and use them properly) and sometimes I do, but sometimes I don’t.
If you don’t know what I mean by title tags, I’m referring to h1 and h2 style tags. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, then look at the stand-alone sentences in bold that are in this post. They’re not actually in bold, they’re in a style called an h2 title tag and it means something to search engines, and the bold effect can be helpful to readers as well.
Back to the example, I’m using title tags in this post. I wrote two other posts immediately before this one, and neither of them have title tags at all. One is published,the other is still in a draft so I may, or may not, go back and put title tags in them.
I suppose “lazy” is the wrong word. “It’s not important to me” is more accurate. I do it if I feel like it and I don’t do it if I don’t feel like it. If it was important to me I would do it every time. Doing this stuff for myself is a hobby, not a career. I do it when I feel like it, as I feel like it, how I feel like it.
That however is still different than knowing what to do and what not to do.
But information changes
Yes and no. Fads change, technology changes, but basic rules and best practices do not. Things change in the sense of now there’s Facebook and before there wasn’t. What hasn’t changed is that what you are posting is available for people to see and you need to be careful what information you put out there.
Not the best example, but still, it’s 1:17am and I should be trying to sleep instead of writing so my thought process is a little fuzzy, or a lot fuzzy, I’m not sure at this point. If I think of a better example by the time I publish this article then I’ll include it, otherwise it is what it is.
Getting back to information changing, my point is that my knowledge is not growing outdated. Not because things haven’t changed, but because I’ve been keeping up.
I KNOW how to do proper SEO. I KNOW how to do PPC. I KNOW a lot of stuff. And I still read and learn about stuff, the changes to that stuff, and even new things as well. I’m keeping up. I didn’t leave the industry. I just stopped doing, mostly, not completely, for myself.
I’m not out of the industry
I’ve been building websites, setting up autoresponders, writing blog posts, installing WordPress Security Packages, maintaining websites, doing social media, etc.
In other words, I’m doing all that stuff I just told you I don’t do anymore.
No, I didn’t lie. I do those things for other people. I have clients. I “white-label” a lot of what I do, in other words, the only people who know it’s me are the people who hired me.
Like I said, in the online world I’m like a mechanic. I get other people’s stuff done but neglect my own. Do as I say, not as I do.
Things change
Lately I’ve been doing more again with my own stuff. Why? I’m not entirely sure. I’ve been much more active in the last few months than I have been in years. Over the last few years some of my automated pipelines have broken, others have slowed down, but they still exist. A replacement piece here, some drain cleaner there, and they’ll be up and running again.
Do as I say, not as I do
Going back to how I started this post. When you read what I write, you don’t have to worry that you’re getting fed a bunch of inaccurate nonsense. I write what I know to be the best way to do things at the time I write them. When things change enough, I correct the old or write something new.
When I get around to it. 😉
If you want someone else’s word about my knowledge, you can ask my clients. Isn’t it convenient that I don’t list them here? Well, here is not my business. I have an actual business. My business is called Sweaty Shop and if you want you can go to https://jeffwoodonline.com and see some of my clients. For “industry insider” info on if I really know what I’m talking about, talk to Ely at YMU or Michael at Payne Media Marketing. There are links to them on my site.
– Jeffery